Kiwoom Securities graduates 27 from fourth cohort of digital finance academy

Kiwoom Securities said Monday it has completed the fourth cohort of its Kiwoom Digital Academy (KDA), a training program for job seekers looking to build expertise in financial data analysis, graduating 27 participants.

The fourth cohort wrapped up their studies at a ceremony held Friday at Kiwoom Securities' headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, completing 568 hours of coursework over 72 days. Participants received training in financial data analysis, Python and SQL programming, AI, and user experience (UX) design — skills applied directly in digital finance.

Kiwoom Securities launched the program last year to cultivate digital finance talent and has expanded it since. Through the fourth cohort, the program has produced 113 graduates in total. A fifth cohort is set to begin later this month.

This cohort broadened its project scope to cover financial services more widely. Participants identified problems facing financial markets and customers, then used data analysis to design and build new financial service solutions.

In the final project showcase, the team "Pomssee" took the top prize with DAY JA VIEW, a service that links currently trending market themes to similar past events, letting users examine how markets reacted and how related share prices moved at the time. The team used ontology — a structured data framework that maps relationships between concepts — to organize historical events and market responses, enabling users to search for comparable cases.

Outstanding participants were also recognized based on a combined assessment of project quality, attendance, class participation, teamwork and growth potential. Award recipients receive an exemption from the document screening stage of Kiwoom Securities' hiring process. The top prize winner, Kim Min-gi, received an additional scholarship of 1 million won ($723).

"The participants showed strong potential as they identified real problems in financial services and worked through solutions using their data analysis skills," a Kiwoom Securities official said. "We will continue to find and develop practice-ready talent suited to the digital finance field."

In previous cohorts, KDA's top projects have included Quest for Glory, a metaverse-based stock market simulation game with a chatbot interface, in the first cohort, and "Kiwoomming," a financial guidance service for novice investors, in the second. The third cohort's top project was "HELAW," an investment insight chatbot that uses AI to analyze National Assembly bills and assess their potential impact on specific stocks. The program has consistently pushed participants beyond basic training, challenging them to translate real market and investor problems into working service solutions.